The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s Sports Column
I’ve decided to root for the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers in this year’s Super Bowl. We can, of course, rightly and officially file this under the heading of Who Gives A Shit?
But in this instance, it’s about more than just picking a team to root for. It’s about coming to terms with Baltimore.
In a game like this one, where I don’t like either team, but you have to watch anyway because, you know, it’s the Super Bowl, my S.O.P. would normally be to simply root against the team I hate more. Using those guidelines, however, this one is a toss up.
On the one hand, San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh seems beyond repugnant. For starters, his entire aesthetic can be described as frat boy jackoff. He comes across as a raging, grunting, chino-wearing jaw box, a femur-wielding baboon of a man who couldn’t help but ruin your daughter’s wedding if you were foolish enough to invite him.
To my mind, Jim Harbaugh is the current poster boy for everything that’s wrong with idiotic, macho jock culture. At first glance, he’s all about boisterous claps and hearty black slaps. But the minute he doesn’t get what he wants, his rah-rah attitude sours, and a tirade of whining and yelling quickly ensues.
Whether pitching a spoiled brat fit at a referee, or acting in ways that redefine the word boorish, Jim Harbaugh’s poor behavior is well documented. And I personally have heard two stories, one firsthand and one secondhand, about him being a loudmouth, a liar, and a bully.
Add all of this up, and it’s no surprise that when you Google “Jim Harbaugh is,” 8 of the 9 auto-suggestions are, in order:
a jerk
crazy
a douche
a prick
frothing mad
a douchebag
an idiot
a whiner
On the other hand, however, I also hate the Baltimore Ravens. Mostly because, for more than a decade now, they’ve been the primary rivals to my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. So rooting hard against the Ravens, almost no matter whom they’re playing, is just what I do.
Under normal circumstances then, I’d be stymied by the 49ers-Ravens matchup. And to cope, I’d either find a rooting interest by laying a bet (take the points and the over), or I’d just laze on my couch and grumble, quietly hoping for a blimp to crash into the stadium.
But alas. I have made up my mind and chosen definitively.
I’m going to root for the Baltimore Ravens. Because mostly, I’m rooting for the city of Baltimore.
Baltimore has become my home. I’ve lived in Charm City for wel
l over a decade now, having first moved here less than two months before 9/11.
During that time, I’ve come to look rather fondly upon Baltimore. This dirty, beaten up old harbor town, with its portly rats, its dirty alleys, its legendary syphilis epidemic, its depressed economy, and its triple-threat drug markets: crack, heroin, and meth.
Everyone here knows exactly what Baltimore is. It’s a second rate city that’s seen far better days. It’s the ugly stepchild of the northeast corridor, I-95′s version of fly-over, or drive-through country as the case may be. Just a tunnel and a toll on your way to New York or Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. And nobody here ever puts on any airs or pretends that Baltimore is something it ain’t. The people are humble, yet proud. Ornery, yet warm.
Because they know that even though Baltimore is a city that smothers its broken dreams in cheap beer and Old Bay, it’s a real city nonetheless. It might be grimy and dilapidated, it might be mired in poverty, it might have a local government that’s unfathomably corrupt and incompetent, but Baltimore still has everything you need: restaurants, museums, parks, bars, and gorgeous architecture.
Baltimore may not have fifty of everything like NYC, or a dozen of everything like Boston and Philly, or even five of everything like D.C., but it does have everything. Maybe just a few of each. Maybe just one of something. But it’s got it if you need it or want it. And I’m a modest man, living here among these modest, oddball people.
The Ravens, though I loathe them, do reflect Baltimore in ways that are suitable and even admirable. Their off-kilter, purple uniforms boast the state flag on the sleeve. It’s a show of hometown pride that’s actually quite rare in professional sports. And since arriving in 1996, the team has played a physical brand of football that excites the perpetually sold-out crowds into a rabid frenzy. Calling their style of play “blue collar” is a cliché, but the nuts and bolts of their play book reflect this post-industrial town. The offense is lacking in gimmickry, and the defense prides itself on hitting opponents very, very hard.
The Ravens have also cultivated a salty and down to earth image, with lunch pail in hand and chip on shoulder. And they don’t seem to particularly care whose feathers they ruffle, no pun intended. Such as when linebacker Terrell Suggs recently called New England Patriots head Coach Bill Belichick an “arrogant prick.”
Oh hell yeah.
But more than anything, perhaps I’ll be pulling for the Ravens in the Super Bowl because I’m rooting for the people of Baltimore. The crab-smash
ing denizens of this dingy and dented town who douse their lake trout sandwiches (it’s not really trout) in hot sauce, who don’t apologize for drinking shitty beer that isn’t even made here anymore (Natty Boh for short), who use lawn chairs to secure parking spots on snowy days (I want to shoot them in the head for that), and who are proud to have the only NFL team named for a literary allusion.
And boy do they want this. Baltimore is a football town, Baltimoreans love their team, and this game really means something to them.
Meanwhile, far too many San Franciscans are too hip to care. And rightly so, I suppose. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve wasted too much of my life watching other people play sports. But then again, I’ve always been a sucker for loyalty and devotion, and the people of this fairly fair city have that in abundance
Look, if Baltimore were going up against most any other NFC team on Sunday, I’d say No Way. Hell with it. Let ‘em feast on a big plate of pain and suffering, with a side of schadenfreude for me, thank you very much.
The water taxi’s about to set sail. Get on board.
Update: My follow up piece, entitled “Baltimore Euphoric,” is here